Tips and Tricks - Chapter 3 Continued

Ok, I went to the store today.  I picked up a whole lot of lovely vegetables and fruits and am planning to make a lot of salads after I finish photographing body parts.

Of all times for this to happen, the fancy cauliflower went on sale and I needed the white.  So I bypassed the beautiful gold and purple varieties and went for dull cream colored.  But Grummy, you ask, why does the color matter? Well, I wanted to show how easy it is to make brains.  Then, on the way home, I realized that purple or gold brains would work too.  Ah well, I’ll get the pretty stuff next time.

So ... brains.  As mentioned, you can use cauliflower.  One of the benefits of cauliflower is that it can be crunchy brains or mushy brains, or anywhere in between brains.  Sometimes that matters.  Crunchy brains and dip might be just the appetizer you’re looking for. 

 

 

Another great brain food (get it?) is pasta.  Just about any shape or form of pasta cooked and drained and left in the colander to cool will look like a brain, but elbow macaroni really works well.  If you have a small cup sized strainer, that would make great individual brains.  If you only have larger strainers, drain the pasta and dish up in small serving bowls to cool, or serve a large family style brain.  Remember, you can always drizzle all sorts of goo on your brain.  Melted cheese makes a good brain goo, marinara too. 

 

 

And sometimes you find hidden thoughts in brains.  If I asked the boys to make their own brains, I’d make sure to have a lot of thinly sliced vegetables and cheese and a lot of cookie cutters so they could cut ideas and stuff them into their brains.  I know the middle one would stuff an awful lot of cars and trucks in his brain.  The oldest would probably cut out some books and maybe a beaker or two (he loves Science).  The youngest wouldn’t bother cutting anything out. It’s food. It all belongs in his brain just as it is. 

 

 

Before we move on to other body parts, let’s talk about caricatures.  Caricatures take a prominent feature and magnify it so that it represents the person being caricatured.  This works for people, things, animals and so forth.  It’s finding the “essence” or what is outstanding about something and using that to represent it.  For example, when we talked about Rapunzel, we focused on her hair.  When we talk about a truck, it could be the wheels.  The idea is to think about the object or person or character from a child’s point of view.  What sticks out to them?  What would be the first thing they say to describe that character?   

When you’re making body parts, it might be a small detail that pulls it all together.  Not all Grandparents were born with equal veggie carving skills or dough sculpting talents, so focus on traits that are outstanding and remember the kids will believe whatever you say if you say it with authority.  Of course, Mathilda that is exactly what happens to the Spider when she tries to walk too soon after painting her toenails.

 

 Consider if you want to make a hand, use one of your grandchildren as a model.  Cut out dough or pie crust around their hand.  Or just make fingers.  If you make fingers, you can roll the dough and then add a sliced almond as a fingernail. 

 

 

How about eyes?  Grapes are a great eye.  You can peel grapes and fill a bowl full of them (my brothers did this to me when I was little) or you can cut them in half if you need them to display as rounded or sliced if you want them flat.  Consider using stuffed olives for eyes.  Again, the profile can be changed simply by halving or slicing the olive or grape.  The long root part of a radish becomes a lovely alien eye stalk.  Cut a cross in the end of a tomato and give it a good squeeze, and you have the worst possible case of pink eye ever.

 

 

One of my favorite ways of portraying birds is by creating pie crust beaks.  You can shape them to be long and pointy, bent, squashed, whatever you want it to look like.  Remember to cut the little nostril holes in the dough too.  That makes it more recognizable as a beak.  You can then place the cooked beaks on the plate strategically to just look like a bird, or you can add them to cherry tomatoes, oranges, kiwis, etc. to make full birds.

 

 

Noses can be done just like beaks.  You can attache them to heads made out of fruit or potatoes, or even out of more dough.  Remember in cooking No, David, I made David heads out of little rolls.  I could have added David noses using pieces of pie crust. 

 

One of the fixatives I like to use is ricotta cheese.  Cream cheese also works, but it’s a bit stiffer than ricotta and not as easy to dab on.  I try not to use toothpicks or inedible attachments.  I figure I want the boys to try everything on the plate, I don’t want to be pointing to certain pieces and saying, oh, except don’t eat that.  I actually made dowels out of mini carrots one time.  Who knows, I might even do some dovetailing on my cucumber slices.  Just try things out.  Don’t wait for the story; play with your own food. 

So these are just some of my ideas for Body Parts.  As I think of more, you’ll either see them incorporated into a meal for a story or in a Tips and Tricks Chapter.   The next time I need to do a Tips and Tricks, I think I’ll concentrate on accessories and clothing.  Mittens and scarves come in handy for winter time stories.  And as the boys told me, I should’ve added socks to their Bath Soup.